STEVENS, Circuit Judge.
The outcome of this litigation depends on three critical issues: (1) whether obnoxious discrimination by a private business is proscribed by § 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
; (2) whether the Brunswick Building is a “public accommodation” within the meaning of § 201(b) (4) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
; and (3) whether defendants refused to rent space in that building to plaintiff because of the race of a large portion of his clientele. To place the issues in proper focus, the proceedings in the district court must be described.
Plaintiff is a white lawyer with a successful criminal practice. Defendant Arthur Rubloff & Co. is a corporation engaged in the management of real properties; as an employee of Rubloff, defendant Dowling is responsible for the management of the Brunswick Building.
On July 17, 1970, plaintiff filed a complaint in the district court alleging that he had been invited to rent offices in the Brunswick Building, that the proposed space and terms were acceptable to him, but that upon “being advised that a substantial number of his clients were of the Black race or of Latin origin,” defendants interrupted the rental discussions and ultimately refused to rent to him. He alleged that the acts of the defendants were part of an unlawful conspiracy to deny him rights secured by the Constitution and violated his statutory right to equal enjoyment of the facilities of a place of public accommodation. He invoked federal jurisdiction under several sections of the civil rights statutes, including 42 U.S.C. §§ 1985(3) and 2000a.
On July 20, 1970, the district court held an evidentiary hearing on plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order. After receiving the testimony of the plaintiff and three executives of Rubloff, he restrained defendants from renting the suite in question to anyone other than the plaintiff until further order of the court.
Subsequently, plaintiff moved for a preliminary injunction and defendant filed a motion for summary judgment. The testimony heard on July 20 comprised almost the entire record in connection with those motions.
After considering exhaustive briefs and argument, the court prepared a careful memorandum opinion and entered the order which gave rise to this appeal.
The court first identified the basic conflict in the testimony:
“Plaintiff maintains he was refused space in such building on the grounds his clientele was Negro or Latin-American. The defendants allege that he was refused on the grounds that he practiced criminal law and his clientele would create an additional security risk within the building.”
Although it is plain from colloquy and from other portions of his memorandum that the court did not consider the plain
tiff’s testimony incredible, he made no findings of fact accepting or rejecting either version of the incident. Under his view of the law, such findings were unnecessary; it is fair to state that he assumed
arguendo
that defendants’ explanation was accurate.
The court then stated the basic issue as whether the plaintiff had standing under the Civil Rights Acts to complain of discrimination based on the nature of his law practice. To determine that issue, the court considered the applicability of the pleaded statutory provisions to a metropolitan office building. He first pointed out that since defendants did not purport to act under color of state law, the charge under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was insufficient, and that the definition of a “dwelling” in § 3602(b) did not encompass an office building, and, therefore, § 3604 did not apply. He also concluded that 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which affords Negroes the same rights as whites, could not apply because plaintiff is white. He then considered the two sections which the parties have debated before us: §§ 2000a and 1985(3).
He noted that there was a restaurant in the basement of the Brunswick Building, but held the public accommodation section of the 1964 Act inapplicable because there was
“no
allegation that plaintiff or his clients [had] been prevented from entering the building to use that restaurant.” He concluded, however, that § 1985(3) did apply.
Presaging the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L. Ed.2d 338, he correctly concluded that private conspiracies, as well as conspiracies under color of state law, are covered by § 1985(3). He then held (1) that the facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the defendants, established an arbitrary discrimination against lawyers engaged in the practice of criminal law; and (2) that since there was no allegation that defendant Dowling acted outside the scope of his authority or without the consent of Rubloff, they should be treated as conspirators.
He denied defendants’ motions for summary judgment and sua sponte entered summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff. He granted an injunction but refused to award damages.
Defendants appeal, contending that it was error to grant summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff when the facts were disputed, and that even if plaintiff’s interpretation of the facts is correct, no violation of § 1985(3) was proved. Plaintiff argues that the ruling was correct and, in any event, that the evidence established a violation of § 2000a.
I.
We first reject defendants’ argument that the conflict in the testimony necessarily requires a reversal of the summary judgment. The judgment does not rest on a finding of racial discrimination and, under the district court’s view of the law, such a finding is unnecessary. Accepting defendants’ explanation of their refusal to rent to plaintiff, the court concluded that their discrimination
against lawyers engaged in the practice of criminal law was wholly arbitrary and contrary to public policy
; he therefore held that plaintiff had been denied the “equal protection of the laws” and “privileges and immunities under the laws” within the meaning of § 1985(3).
For the purpose of our analysis of the statute, we assume that the classification of criminal lawyers, as undesirable tenants is irrational and could not be justified by any. compelling, or indeed any legitimate, interest of the defendants. On this assumption, we consider whether the discrimination is proscribed by § 2 of the 1871 Act, now 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3).
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STEVENS, Circuit Judge.
The outcome of this litigation depends on three critical issues: (1) whether obnoxious discrimination by a private business is proscribed by § 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
; (2) whether the Brunswick Building is a “public accommodation” within the meaning of § 201(b) (4) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
; and (3) whether defendants refused to rent space in that building to plaintiff because of the race of a large portion of his clientele. To place the issues in proper focus, the proceedings in the district court must be described.
Plaintiff is a white lawyer with a successful criminal practice. Defendant Arthur Rubloff & Co. is a corporation engaged in the management of real properties; as an employee of Rubloff, defendant Dowling is responsible for the management of the Brunswick Building.
On July 17, 1970, plaintiff filed a complaint in the district court alleging that he had been invited to rent offices in the Brunswick Building, that the proposed space and terms were acceptable to him, but that upon “being advised that a substantial number of his clients were of the Black race or of Latin origin,” defendants interrupted the rental discussions and ultimately refused to rent to him. He alleged that the acts of the defendants were part of an unlawful conspiracy to deny him rights secured by the Constitution and violated his statutory right to equal enjoyment of the facilities of a place of public accommodation. He invoked federal jurisdiction under several sections of the civil rights statutes, including 42 U.S.C. §§ 1985(3) and 2000a.
On July 20, 1970, the district court held an evidentiary hearing on plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order. After receiving the testimony of the plaintiff and three executives of Rubloff, he restrained defendants from renting the suite in question to anyone other than the plaintiff until further order of the court.
Subsequently, plaintiff moved for a preliminary injunction and defendant filed a motion for summary judgment. The testimony heard on July 20 comprised almost the entire record in connection with those motions.
After considering exhaustive briefs and argument, the court prepared a careful memorandum opinion and entered the order which gave rise to this appeal.
The court first identified the basic conflict in the testimony:
“Plaintiff maintains he was refused space in such building on the grounds his clientele was Negro or Latin-American. The defendants allege that he was refused on the grounds that he practiced criminal law and his clientele would create an additional security risk within the building.”
Although it is plain from colloquy and from other portions of his memorandum that the court did not consider the plain
tiff’s testimony incredible, he made no findings of fact accepting or rejecting either version of the incident. Under his view of the law, such findings were unnecessary; it is fair to state that he assumed
arguendo
that defendants’ explanation was accurate.
The court then stated the basic issue as whether the plaintiff had standing under the Civil Rights Acts to complain of discrimination based on the nature of his law practice. To determine that issue, the court considered the applicability of the pleaded statutory provisions to a metropolitan office building. He first pointed out that since defendants did not purport to act under color of state law, the charge under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was insufficient, and that the definition of a “dwelling” in § 3602(b) did not encompass an office building, and, therefore, § 3604 did not apply. He also concluded that 42 U.S.C. § 1981, which affords Negroes the same rights as whites, could not apply because plaintiff is white. He then considered the two sections which the parties have debated before us: §§ 2000a and 1985(3).
He noted that there was a restaurant in the basement of the Brunswick Building, but held the public accommodation section of the 1964 Act inapplicable because there was
“no
allegation that plaintiff or his clients [had] been prevented from entering the building to use that restaurant.” He concluded, however, that § 1985(3) did apply.
Presaging the Supreme Court’s subsequent decision in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L. Ed.2d 338, he correctly concluded that private conspiracies, as well as conspiracies under color of state law, are covered by § 1985(3). He then held (1) that the facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the defendants, established an arbitrary discrimination against lawyers engaged in the practice of criminal law; and (2) that since there was no allegation that defendant Dowling acted outside the scope of his authority or without the consent of Rubloff, they should be treated as conspirators.
He denied defendants’ motions for summary judgment and sua sponte entered summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff. He granted an injunction but refused to award damages.
Defendants appeal, contending that it was error to grant summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff when the facts were disputed, and that even if plaintiff’s interpretation of the facts is correct, no violation of § 1985(3) was proved. Plaintiff argues that the ruling was correct and, in any event, that the evidence established a violation of § 2000a.
I.
We first reject defendants’ argument that the conflict in the testimony necessarily requires a reversal of the summary judgment. The judgment does not rest on a finding of racial discrimination and, under the district court’s view of the law, such a finding is unnecessary. Accepting defendants’ explanation of their refusal to rent to plaintiff, the court concluded that their discrimination
against lawyers engaged in the practice of criminal law was wholly arbitrary and contrary to public policy
; he therefore held that plaintiff had been denied the “equal protection of the laws” and “privileges and immunities under the laws” within the meaning of § 1985(3).
For the purpose of our analysis of the statute, we assume that the classification of criminal lawyers, as undesirable tenants is irrational and could not be justified by any. compelling, or indeed any legitimate, interest of the defendants. On this assumption, we consider whether the discrimination is proscribed by § 2 of the 1871 Act, now 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3).
Plaintiff does not contend that the defendants acted under color of state law, or that there was any state involvement in the discrimination. Since it is clear that this section covers purely private conspiracies, Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338, it is often assumed that state action is never an element of a § 1985(3) violation. The validity of this assumption is open to some question.
The conduct proscribed by the section is that of “two or more persons.” In this case three persons were involved in the discriminatory act: defendant Dowl-ing, who communicated with plaintiff; the witness Brennan, who testified that he made the decision not to rent to plaintiff; and Rubloff, their corporate employer. Since only one firm was involved, and both Brennan and Dowling acted within the scope of their authority as agents for that firm, it is open to question whether the conspiracy requirement of § 1985(3) has been met.
These questions are illuminated by identifying a distinction between the interests of the plaintiff that the statute was enacted to protect and the conduct of the defendants which it proscribes, and by considering the relationship between §§ 1983 and 1985(3), the respec-
ti ve lineal descendants of §§ 1 and 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
Although the point is sometimes obscured or overlooked, § 1983 contains two quite distinct “state involvement” requirements. The first is clearly stated in the statute: the defendants must have acted “under color of” state law.
The second inheres in the nature of plaintiff’s protected rights: he may not be deprived “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.”
His Fourteenth Amendment right to protection against discrimination extends only to cases in which state action is involved.
Section 1985(3) does not expressly identify any “state involvement” requirement. The most obvious difference in language between §§ 1983 and 1985(3) is the omission from the latter of the “under color of state law” language included in the former. Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338, has squarely held that this omission is significant and that the latter statute applies to purely private conspiracies, whereas the former applies only to conduct under color of state law. The omitted language, however, is directed to the proscribed conduct of the defendants rather than the nature of the plaintiffs’ rights which are protected by the statute. Thus, although
Griffin
makes it perfectly clear that some- purely private conspiracies among defendants are proscribed by § 1985(3),
Griffin
did not purport to delineate the scope of the rights secured by the statute.
With respect to plaintiff’s protected interests, the language of §§ 1983 and 1985(3) also differs, but the coverage of the two provisions is probably co
extensive.
Thus, the state involvement aspects of § 1983 cases which are directed to the “protected interests” rather than the “proscribed conduct” portion of § 1983 are relevant in understanding the coverage of § 1985(3). The breadth of the statute’s coverage is yet to be determined, but three categories of protected rights have been plainly identified.
Griffin
gives express recognition to a black citizen’s Thirteenth Amendment rights
and to his federal right to travel interstate;
the title of the statute expressly identifies the third category, namely, rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
We think the § 1983 cases make it clear that in this third category a “state involvement” requirement must survive
Griffin.
Since plaintiff is white and claims no abridgement of his constitutional right to travel, the holding of
Griffin
does not control this case.
Indeed, the Court expressly noted that it was not deciding “whether a conspiracy motivated by invidiously discriminatory intent other than racial bias would be actionable” under § 1985(3).
Thus, the Court did not have occasion to consider the effect of the statute on private conspiracies designed to deprive the plaintiff of rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court has, however, considered the application of a comparable statute, 18 U.S.C. § 241, in this area. In United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 86 S.Ct. 1170, 16 L.Ed.2d 239, the Court sustained an indictment of private citizens who had allegedly conspired to deny Negro citizens their right to equal utilization of public facilities operated by
the State of Georgia. It is a fair distillation of the four opinions filed in that case to state that, although there was disagreement within the Court on the question whether defendants’ private conduct would have been proscribed if there had been no cooperative action by state officers, all members of the Court recognized the need for state involvement in the provision of facilities to which the victims of the conspiracy were denied equal access.
In short, the right secured by the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a right to protection against unequal treatment by a state.
Since the Fourteenth Amendment, unlike the Thirteenth, affords the plaintiff no protection against discrimination in which there is no state involvement of any kind, a private conspiracy which arbitrarily denies him access to private property does not abridge his Fourteenth Amendment rights. We therefore conclude that an arbitrary business discrimination against lawyers engaged in the practice of criminal law does not deprive plaintiff of “equal protection of the laws” within the meaning of § 1985(3) if there is no state involvement whatsoever in the discrimination.
We also believe that the statutory requirement that “two or more persons . . . conspire or go in disguise on the highway,” is not satisfied by proof that a discriminatory business decision reflects the collective judgment of two or more executives of the same firm. We do not suggest that an agent’s action within the scope of his authority will always avoid a conspiracy finding. Agents of the Klan certainly could not carry out acts of violence with impunity simply because they were acting under orders from the Grand Dragon. But if the challenged conduct is essentially a single act of discrimination by a single business entity, the fact that two or more agents participated in the decision or in the act itself will normally not constitute the conspiracy contemplated by this statute.
Cf.
Morrison v. California, 291 U.S. 82, 92, 54 S.Ct. 281, 78 L.Ed. 664. In this case we believe the evidence fails to establish this element of a § 1985(3) violation.
We therefore hold that the judgment cannot be supported under this statute.
II.
Defendants contend that summary judgment should be entered in their favor even if the District Judge should find that their refusal was motivated by discrimination against the race of plaintiff’s clients. If the Brunswick Building is a “public accommodation” as de
fined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they are plainly wrong. For in its most recent decision construing that statute, the Supreme Court unequivocally equated discrimination against a person because of his race with discrimination because of the race of his companions.
Plaintiff argues here that the district court improperly concluded that the Brunswick Building is not a public accommodation. We agree that his reasons for rejecting this contention were insufficient because he did not fully consider the possible applicability of § 2000a(b) (4). That subparagraph expands the definition to encompass:
“any establishment (A) (i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment.”
The facts which might determine whether the Brunswick Building fits this definition were not developed in the trial court, but defendants have acknowledged that the restaurant on the premises is a “covered establishment.” Thus, since the condition stated in part (ii) of clause (A) is satisfied, the issue is whether clause (B) applies.
In statutory terms, does the Brunswick Building hold itself out as serving patrons of the restaurant in the building ?
The significance of this clause is not entirely clear. There is language in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Daniel v. Paul, 395 U.S. 298, 89 S.Ct. 1697, 23 L. Ed.2d 318, that implies that any establishment which serves the public, and which has a public restaurant within it, is itself a public accommodation,
and it has been held that a public cafeteria
in a hospital makes the hospital itself a public accommodation.
Moreover, since it is clear that the building could not refuse to rent space to plaintiff because of
his race,
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co, 392 U.S. 409, 423-424, 88 S. Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189, the prohibition against discrimination against a prospective tenant because of the race of his clients or customers would not constitute a radical departure from settled principles. See Adickes v. Kress & Co, 398 U.S. 144, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142.
We recognize, however, as defendants argue, that the legislative history of this particular provision contains no express reference to commercial office buildings, and it is not our function to enlarge on the policy determinations of Congress.
It is entirely possible that the issue will turn on factual details which are not now in the record. There is no evidence indicating the extent to which the Brunswick Building “holds itself out” as serving patrons of its restaurant. Findings setting forth the services which the building offers to the patrons of the restaurant, or indeed the part which the restaurant plays in the way the building holds itself out to prospective tenants, may well be relevant to the issue. This much we think is clear: the issue is sufficiently important and difficult that we should not decide it on a partial record. Unless the district court
makes the requisite finding of racial discrimination, we need not, and should not, reach the issue.
It is possible that after a full trial, both the public accommodation issue and the racial discrimination issue might be resolved in plaintiff’s favor. For that reason, defendants’ contention that they are entitled to summary judgment must be rejected.
III.
Plaintiff has also relied on § 1981, and on appeal he relies heavily on Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1180, for the proposition that the Supreme Court has broadly construed 42 U.S.C. § 1982 to prohibit all racial discrimination in the sale or rental of real property.
He then argues that § 1981 is a companion to § 1982,
and that Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L. Ed.2d 142, has obliterated any distinction between discrimination based on a person’s race and that based on the race of his associates.
The argument glosses over important differences in statutory language,
but certainly has force.
However, again we should not evaluate the argument until it is necessary to do so in order to determine the controversy between the parties.
In sum, we believe the case must be remanded to the district court for the entry of findings of fact which, if favorable to defendants, may avoid the difficult legal issues, and if favorable to plaintiff, will make it possible to decide those questions on a complete record. To the extent that any party has additional relevant evidence to offer, it should, of course, be received.
The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.